On a VPS it should have Plesk or WHM/Cpanel, these are too expensive for a home setup so I think the best option is Virtualmin. A VPS will have the OS/plesk/Cpanel already set-up and configured, the home system won't.. To set up centos/virtualmin at home it's a matter of downloading centos (3Gb DVD) and running through the install (If you can install windows you can install Centos) for Virtualmin there's a INSTALL.SH on their website that will do a full Virtualmin/Usermin/Webmin install, all together that shouldn;t take more than an hour. All you do then is to
https://IP:10000 and you then have a nice webpage to set-up all your domains/backups/etc....
As I said if you have an old machine (P3 1Gb or above(to slow for normal usage but fine for a test at home)) then give it a simple test, it'll give you a fully featured php/apache/mysql/postfix web server that you can then test/configure over your lan to see what you think